Bionic Arms, VR Controlled Teddy Bears, and Other Curiosities

This year’s Asia Hardware Battle featured a smorgasbord of hardware products, making it clear just how broad the term hardware has become and how rapidly the field has expanded.

The hardware competition showcased a total of fifteen startups from all over Asia: India, China, South Korea, Israel, and Japan. Startups came from a diverse range of industries, tackling problems around urban farming, sleep quality, bad coffee, long distance relationships, healthcare, air pollution, personal fitness, and more.

Social enterprises made a strong presence at this year’s competition, such as Chakr, whose product converts harmful particulates from diesel emissions into ink. Health-related products were also popular, such as exii.Inc and MedEXO Robotics’ bionic arms, which help amputees and patients suffering from Parkinson’s, respectively.

After a grueling session of fifteen back-to-back pitches, Asia Hardware Battle chose the following three startups as the winners:

Alesca Life

Alesca Life, the Beijing-based urban farming startup is bridging the gap between urban consumers and fresh produce with container ‘farms’ perfect for the city environment.

exii Inc.

exiii Inc.’s robotic limb is a 3D-printed alternative to replacement limbs for amputees, which can typically start at $15,000. exiii’s open source solution will retail within a year for around $2000, according to the company.

Meirenji (每人计)

Meirenji won the final competition with their sophisticated solution to offline retail data collection and analysis.